Mark Dunn - American Decameron

Jelena nodded. She had begun to tap her foot again. She had missed her chance to pop her corn before the parade of states. Now she’d have to do it during a Toni Home Permanent commercial or the big spangled musical production number in which pageant host Bert Parks made his annual attempt to sing and dance.

Pete went on: “Even as she is being assaulted from all directions. By the women’s libbers with their — their — their anger, and the uptight evangelical Bible-huggers with their — their what?”

“Their anger,” said Herman, to be helpful.

Jelena nodded. “And the point is that no woman should have to answer to another woman for anything .” Jelena took a breath. “Or answer to a man either, for that matter” she concluded, eyeing her husband.

“What is this? Have I ever once told you what I thought you ought to be doing? The world may be in flames right now, but please note: nothing’s on fire in this house. We have a very good marriage, do we not? I may be a stick-in-the-mud sometimes — I’m sorry. That’s the way I was brought up. But I love you, and I respect you, and you wanted a house in your old neighborhood, and I agreed that you should have it, even though the smell of the meat coming from those packing houses — it used to make me—”

“Just a moment earlier you called it the smell of American enterprise.”

“I’m drunk. I don’t know what I’m saying. So listen now to what I’m saying—”

“My show’s almost on. I’m going to miss seeing Miss Illinois. They say she has a good chance of winning.”

“What does she do?” asked the priest. “For her talent, I mean. What’s her ta-talent?”

“She’s a trampolinist.”

“What is that?” asked Herman. “Is that what I think it is?”

“Yes, Herman. She jumps up and down.”

“Is she chesty?” asked Herman, looking up, a little expectantly, at his wife.

“For the love of Mike, Ljubavi! I’m going inside.”

“I’m coming in too. I want to see Miss Illinois jump up and down. This is what she wants to do and we will honor her choice. Are you coming, Petey?”

Peter Mullavey shook his head. “I think I’d like to sit here for a little — a—a — little while longer.”

“You sure you don’t want to…” Herman had stepped away from the doorway to give the priest room to come inside.

“Just for a few minutes. It’s nice out here.”

“You’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. I mean, who do — do you think I’m thinking about?”

“You and I both know. Your Mrs. Davies. You’re thinking about the two of you, huh? Cozied up together on the couch with your bowl of Jiffy Pop, watching Bishop Sheen together.”

Pete looked out at all the twinkling lights of Kansas City, Missouri. One of those lights represented the rectory where the priest slept and ate and prayed and kept a chaste distance from the woman he had loved since the day she had come to be his cook and housekeeper. “I’d like to liberated someday.”

“Don’t blaspheme, Petey. You always get irreverent when you’ve had a nip too many.”

“I’ve got nothing against God. Or the church, for that matter. It’s men who — who did this to me. You — you — you talk about women telling other women what it is they ought to be doing.” The priest lowered his voice. “But my problem is with men . It’s men who put me here. It’s the men of my faith who s-say I’m not allowed to worship God while seeking a different kind of Heaven in the arms of a beautiful woman. What r-right have they to tell me this, Herman? What right?” Pete Mullavey grew silent, thoughtful, yearning, then mournful. Herman held his vigil beside the door. He could hear the opening music of the 1968 Miss America Pageant starring Bert Parks and fifty-one of the finest examples of American womanhood. “There she is…” There they were.

“I’ll call you in when Miss Illinois climbs up on her trampoline, Petey. Go easy on the booze. I don’t want you to fall down and break your crown and wind up in the Kansas River.”

Peter Mullavey nodded. He sighed. He leaned back in the stationary rocker and closed his eyes. He saw Mrs. Davies sitting in the front pew of his parish church, smiling supportively through his slightly stammered homilies. He imagined the curves of Mrs. Davies in her house frock, standing with her back to him in the early morning light, frying up his sausage and eggs. Sometimes he pretended that they were married — happily married like his friends Herman and Jelena.

Peter Mullavey and his oldest friend and fellow altar boy Herman Klar and Herman’s opinionated, longsuffering, long-loving wife Jelena inaugurated a new annual ritual that year. On a particular Saturday every year in early September, the three popped popcorn and poured Schnapps and Scotch whiskey, and watched Miss America together. In fact, it was during the 1976 broadcast that Father Mullavey suffered the stroke that incapacitated him for the next year and a half and resulted ultimately in his retirement from active ministry. The causal arterial embolism occurred while Bert Parks, backed up by three young bobble-headed male dancers in tuxedos, sang the pop hit by Paul McCartney, “Let ’Em In.”

Mrs. Davies was there at Pete’s bedside at the hospital and then every day at the rectory to assist him in his daily rehabilitation therapy. Every morning she was up early to fry his sausage and eggs. One morning he reached up as she was setting the plate in front of him, reached up and touched her cheek with the fingertips of his right hand — the good hand — touched her soft, warm cheek sweetly, achingly, ever so briefly.

The first year it was a Spartan, and Yellowstone and the Tetons; the next year a Vagabond, and the Badlands and the Four Faces. Last year we bought a used Airway Zephyr and flew like the wind up and down the California and Oregon coastline. This year we went to Bryce and Zion and the Grand Canyon. I don’t know why it took us so long to get to the Grand Canyon. There’s simply no way to describe it — like nothing we’ve seen in all of our four years of vacationing out west. Especially when you’re vacationing in luxury in a brand-new Avion thirty-one-foot, two-and-a-half-ton Imperial. As the name implies, it’s the biggest travel trailer the Avion company makes.

My husband has, over the last several years, become a master rig hauler. He’s a man of many talents, that’s for certain, and I never doubted that he would get so good at “travelcading.” Although Clint inherited quite a bit of money from his father, he didn’t simply plop himself down upon his family windfall and proceed to a life of self-indulgence. We have taken a good deal of the Dinkman’s Pastries fortune and given it to a number of charities and organizations whose causes we believe in. (Only a small portion of the inheritance actually finances our extensive summer travels through the Great American West.)

Clint has learned to play the violin and he’s writing a book about General Custer. I am a gourmet chef. You wouldn’t believe the meals I can whip up for my husband and our two hungry road puppies using that Avion butane range with bifold top and broiler. I should have mentioned our road puppies sooner. Robert Joseph — known as R.J. (he’s eleven) — and Lisha (she’s nearing ten) couldn’t wait to get out of school and hit the road for two and a half glorious months of scenic adventure with Mom and Dad. From day one we were like one of those families in the 1950s travelogues, waving and mugging at the camera as they insert their car through the hollowed-out trunk of that Wawona giant sequoia in Yosemite — something that we would have liked someday to do (unhitched, of course) had a heavy snowfall not toppled that majestic Old Man of the Forest just last winter.